Heritage Volunteer John Hess reflects on an important anniversary
Dust down the bunting. Light the candles! What’s not to like about a special event or anniversary to celebrate. And for Notts cricket fans, there’s a centenary this August that’s well worth cracking open a bottle of bubbly and toasting one of our all-time home-grown sporting heroes.
The date itself is 20 August 1924, when Harold Larwood – arguably the greatest of Notts and England’s fast bowlers – made his debut for Nottinghamshire in First-Class cricket. Of course, any mention of Harold Larwood and one word springs to mind, “Bodyline.”
This article isn’t about the controversy and fall-out from the 1932/33 Ashes tour of Australia – and the big issue, then and still now: were Harold’s lightning deliveries aimed at smashing the wicket or the opposing Aussie batter? The row and diplomatic bust-up that followed in the so-called “Bodyline” tour is well documented and covered elsewhere on this web site.
Perhaps, what’s not so well known is Harold’s earlier cricketing years and that debut nine years earlier at Trent Bridge.
The season started for Harold with a warm-up match against the Notts Cricket Association, in which he bagged seven wickets for 49 runs. Little wonder that after success in Minor Counties matches – including 6-70 against Staffordshire – Harold got his call-up for the Notts first team.
There was little doubting his potential as a wicket taker. But what impression would the young Harold have made on you in those days? He was in his early 20s and came from a coal mining family. Born at Nuncargate, near Kirkby-in-Ashfield, he initially worked at the local pit at Annesley.
His father, Richard, also worked underground but when he came to the surface and daylight, he would take young Harold to the local village playing fields to practice with bat and ball. Even then, Harold was obsessed by cricket…his dad made bats from wood off-cuts and bought ninepenny cricket balls. They would last barely a week because Harold hit them so hard.
He was modestly built and weighed less than 11 stones, but what particularly stands out in some early photographs are Harold’s piercing eyes. There’s an almost laser-like intensity looking straight into the camera lens. Maybe, here’s the clue to a later description of Harold’s bowling as “the terror of the Shires.”
So, the scene is set for Harold’s debut in First-Class cricket: Notts were playing Northamptonshire at Trent Bridge, and the August weather was distinctly disappointing.
Rain had affected all three days of play. Yet, in between the showers, Harold took his first wicket in the County Championship. It would have been a moment to savour.
The wicket belonged to Vallance Jupp, an experienced Test player, who was described by Wisden as “the best amateur all-rounder” in county cricket. He was lbw for 23 runs.
The match limped on to an unspectacular draw, with Harold bowling 26 overs at a cost of 71 Northants runs.
Harold’s debut had caught the eye. There was a similar pattern the following season.
The Nottingham Guardian newspaper reported: “The arrival of Harold Larwood, the 20-year-old Nuncargate professional, must constitute one of the outstanding features of the season in Notts cricket.”
With the foresight of a Mystic Meg, the Nottingham Guardian noted: “This somewhat diminutive recruit for a fast bowler has astonished everybody by his extraordinary pace and accuracy.
“It is possible Notts have found another potential international.”
Harold had joined the books of Notts as a professional after being talent spotted by coach Jimmy Iremonger.
“What Iremonger saw,” writes Duncan Hamilton, in his outstanding biography of Harold Larwood, “was a raw talent, malleable and promising enough to be shaped into a weapon.”
It was to become a weapon that would bowl consistently at speeds of 94-100 mph.
And yet, Harold’s personal assessment of his debut was decidedly low key.
“I wasn’t ready,” he recalled. He even apologised to his mentor, telling Jimmy Iremonger he had let him down, and felt his call-up was premature.
Iremonger reassured his young protégé: “You haven’t started yet and you’re talking as if your career’s over!”
“Don’t worry, lad, you’ll be fine.”
In the 1925 season, Harold didn’t play for the first team until the eighth match in mid-June…against Yorkshire at Bramall Lane, Sheffield. The match was comfortably won by the home team, who would eventually progress to become county champions. But once again, Harold made an impact taking an early wicket in the first innings.
In Raymond Smith’s 2006 biography, he rejoices that “in 1925, a new star is born.
“In the second innings, he added the wickets of batsman Maurice Leyland and Roy Kilner, both caught in the slips by his Notts captain Arthur Carr.”
Like Jimmy Iremonger, Carr was to have a similar huge influence on Harold’s life – especially when the Notts captain helped to develop the “Bodyline” strategy which Harold and his team-mate, fellow fast bowler Bill Voce, put to devasting effect on the later Ashes tour of Australia.
Put simply, the two Notts fast bowlers were told to aim their bouncers at the batter’s chest… in anticipation of an easy catch by fielders on the close leg side, as the batter attempted to defend themselves. In the era before protective helmets and gear, was this gentlemanly play? Ah, a reminder that’s not the subject of this article!
Back to 1925 and, even when used in short spells, Harold could devastate the batting order of the strongest opposition. He took 73 wickets at 18.01 each.
The Cricketer newspaper noted at the time: “Larwood proved a distinct find. He is a fast medium [fast-medium? Ed] bowler, with an easy delivery that possesses great pace.”
Notts were at their best in that August, winning their last six matches and turning a lacklustre start to the season into a strong finish.
The England selectors soon came to call. “Larwood was tended as carefully as a thoroughbred colt, since England then had no other fast bowler,” wrote Phil Edmonds in his “100 Greatest Bowlers” book.
At Lords, Harold made his England debut against Australia in 1926 and helped them win the final Test of the series.
All professional sportspeople can be prone to injury and 1927 was to be disappointing for Harold and for his county side. Notts came second to Lancashire in the championship, but they had lost their wicket-taking “Terror of the Shires” for eleven of the last twelve matches.
Personally though, 1927 was to be particularly significant: he got married at the end of the season, to Lois from Huthwaite…at Basford Register Office.
A happy combination of Lois and his recovery from his sports injury put Harold back on the road to fast bowling, although not in time for what would have been his first overseas tour of Australia.
Peter Wynne-Thomas found this remarkable quote from Test veteran Sir Pelham “Plum” Warner, speaking in 1927 about Harold and the concerns over his fitness:
“The fate of the British Empire, so far as cricket is concerned, depends to a large extent on whether Larwood is fit.”
Wynne-Thomas observed that, even in 1927, Larwood was regarded as the saviour of English cricket and this tone was maintained for the next five years…until the Ashes tour of 1932/3 and Bodyline.
Larwood – affectionately called ‘Lol’ by his team-mates – played for Notts until 1938, taking 1,247 First-Class wickets @ 16.24 (a long way from that debut 1-71!); he took five wickets in an innings 89 times and ten in a match 19 times for his home county.
His best bowling figures were 9-41, against Kent at Trent Bridge in June 1931. No slouch with the bat, Harold made three centuries but never topped the 102no he made versus Sussex, also at his home ground, just a month before that bowling feat.
In a neat touch of symmetry, his last First-Class match was…at home to Northamptonshire. Although he did not bowl in the match, his last scoring stroke in First-Class cricket was a six off John Buswell!
It was not, though, his final game at his home ground – that came in 1941 when he played for the ‘Other Ranks’ in a victory over an ‘Officers XI’ in one of the many war time matches staged at Trent Bridge. ‘Lol’ took the first two wickets for just 13 runs in front of 4,000 spectators.
The cricket establishment did not shower one of the greatest of bowlers with the honours his talents deserved but he was a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1927 and, posthumously, awarded the Wisden Trophy for Test Performance of 1928 as recently as 2023. That his MBE for ‘services to cricket’ came in 1993 when the self-confessed ‘cricket nut’ John Major was Prime Minister may not be coincidental.
It is fitting now, 100 years after that First-Class debut and 120 years since his birth (November 1904) in North Nottinghamshire, to remember a great son of the county.
August 2024
Copies of the books mentioned in John Hess’s article – and many others on Larwood and the Bodyline tour – are available in the Wynne-Thomas Library at Trent Bridge.
Larwood photographs and memorabilia are on display in the Museum Room at Trent Bridge.
Harold Larwood’s profile and career stats can be found here